Food Lit Book Club

It is time for the next installment of our popular Food Lit Book Club! This is a great way to meet a new friend, to hear a new idea and to share your own stories and sources of inspiration. 

Heather Knape, our fearless moderator, sends out discussion topics and questions before each monthly meeting. Many members are cooks and food producers themselves, they meet the third Sunday of every month to share a potluck lunch and talk about a particular book (there are no snacks or beverages provided by 18 Reasons).
 The book's author or a knowledgeable special guest frequently attends the meeting.

December 2014 (This meeting is the 2nd week of the month!):
Wild Card: Best Food Writing 2013, edited by Holly Hughs

Holly Hughes, editor of Best Food Writing 2013, will answer questions from Food Lit members for this meeting. Unfortunately she won't be able to join us via Skype, but we'll hear from her nonetheless.

This collection of essays and articles has been a lot of fun to read, it looks beyond some current foodie trends to offer perhaps more mature ideas on where our country's obsession with food is heading. Included are a couple pieces we've already read for Food Lit (Michael Pollan's "Step 2: Saute Onions and Other Aromatic Vegetables" from Cooked and "Lobster Lessons" from The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage). There is an essay attempting to explain the hype behind Mission Chinese NYC, one on Roy Choi's vacation in Hawaii (where he encounters some really bad Korean tacos), Gabrielle Hamilton's road trip to research home cooking and my favorite so far, Molly Watson's "A Snail's Tail," which covers one true local food - her story of harvesting, preparing and eating San Francisco garden snails with her son. 

If that's not enough to get you excited, remember that you don't need to have finished (or even begun) the book to attend the meeting. Even if you're just starting to get interested in opening the cover please join us! 

We'll be sharing our usual lunchtime potluck, so please bring a drink or dish to share. Anything related to the book would be extra-special, or a holiday cocktail or other seasonal treat. I haven't scheduled extra time for a party this year but we can celebrate just the same, as this is our last meeting of 2014 before we embark on Food Lit's 6th year!
 

Heather Knape has been leading 18 Reasons' Food Lit book club since its inception in 2010. She is a freelance editor, writer and photographer who lives in San Francisco. Heather blogs about growing, cooking and eating food with her family, in addition to reading books, at Eating Dirt.